Involving all East Bank partners, SEEDED offers a platform for early-career artists from east London to explore themes linked to their creative practice.
London-born artist Kookie Blu (Cleo Thomas) centred her project ‘The NEURO Collective’ on neurodivergent creativity, using performance and visual storytelling to challenge conventions and celebrate difference at London College of Fashion (LCF), UAL.
At UCL East (University College London), award-winning multidisciplinary artist Naresh Kaushal explored the lived experience of power through moving image, installation, and immersive technology.
The programme concluded with a showcasing event in April, where LCF and UCL East's Creative Practitioners in Residence each screened films they had created that documented their residency journeys.
Following their 6-month residency, Thomas and Kaushal are now preparing for the SEEDED exhibition in October 2025, where they will be joined by former residents Mercedes Baptise Halliday, Noemi Gunea and Toyin Gbomedo. The exhibition will run from 14 - 18 October 2025 in LCF’s Wolfson Gallery.
To mark the end of their journey, the 2 residents unpack their inspirations, processes, challenges, and the lasting impact of having been part of the SEEDED programme.
What attracted you to the SEEDED programme?
It was the chance to use my creativity to spark meaningful change within the neurodivergent community. The access to space, resources, and the nurturing environment at LCF made it feel like the right place to develop, explore, and amplify my vision.
Tell us a bit more about Kookie Blu and what she represents.
Kookie Blu is a vibrant extension of who I am — a neurodivergent creative and a visionary. She represents freedom of expression, boldness, and breaking the mould. Through Kookie Blu, I use storytelling, visual art, and performance to push boundaries and create space for others to see the beauty in difference. She’s not here to conform – she's here to connect, challenge, and champion creativity in all its forms.
What was the focus of your work during the residency and what were your outputs?
The heart of my residency was building a creative, inclusive space for neurodivergent individuals to explore what’s going on inside their minds. We created art together, from painting symbolic brain canvases to filming portraits and building collaborative installations. The outputs included a series of community-led workshops, self-portraits, sound recordings, and a short experimental film, all highlighting identity, wellbeing, and creative expression.
How has your practice developed during this residency?
This residency helped me grow in ways I didn’t expect. It gave me space to build structure around my ideas and push them to the next level. I’ve developed a clearer vision of how I want to run my creative practice, with a stronger foundation in planning, partnership, and curation. It’s taught me to trust my process and has solidified my desire to make long-lasting social impact.
What was your highlight of the residency, or a moment that really sticks out to you?
There were so many special moments, but one that stays with me is watching participants truly open up during our mental health and wellbeing workshop. The way they shared and supported one another was powerful – it showed just how vital safe creative spaces are. The closing day, with our experimental film and self-portrait exhibition, was another emotional high. Seeing everyone’s work presented back to them felt like magic. It wasn’t just about showcasing it was about being seen.
How do you plan to integrate what you’ve learned during the residency into your future work?
This is just the beginning. I’m planning to expand the work into a platform that champions neurodivergent voices through creative experiences, education, and collaborative projects. I want to continue hosting workshops, curating exhibitions, and producing media that challenges perceptions and uplifts others — creating a space where neurodivergent talent is nurtured, celebrated, and empowered.
Everything! From the structure of the programme and the previous years’ work, I could see there was a high level of practice that resonated really strongly with my own. On top of that, the chance to work with the UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and engage with their brilliant work they do in terms of bringing community voice into policy making was too good an opportunity to miss.
Tell us a bit more about your creative practise and process.
My work combines socially engaged practice, abstraction and experimental storytelling to explore the lived experience of power in society. Taking a participatory arts approach to a multidisciplinary arts practice I work across film, installation, theatre of the oppressed, photography live art and immersive tech. Focusing particularly on underrepresented voices, my practice creates spaces for agency, ownership, critique, and empowerment amongst participants and audiences.
My focus has been to develop new work during the residency — something that unites the real-world diversity of working-class communities in ongoing spaces they have meaningful ownership of. I also wanted to see how my practice itself could be situated in a policy setting.
As such, there were two dimensions to my activity. One involved developing new work that I could bring to communities in East London, and the other embedding myself in the IGP and seeing first-hand how they brought community participation into policy setting, most notably with through the work of citizen science academy.
This led to 3 main outputs:
I have been really fortunate to have had a brilliant time. It's been a wonderful mixture of affirmation and growth. I've been able to bring together the different strands of my practice in a coherent form and then explore how that situates in new professional contexts.
So many to choose from! I think the two playtests of the participatory pieces were really wonderful moments. The range of participants who came together across both days really added a vibrancy to them. Mainly, though, it was the way that people engaged and played the pieces. It brought so much to experiences and gave some tremendous tangible insights.
Equally, working with Mohammed on his two audio documentaries was incredible also. I could tell straight away from what he said and the interviews that he had done that he had a really powerful and sophisticated take on what he wanted to say. Working with him to craft things and seeing how well it all turned out was wonderful.
How do you plan to integrate what you've learned during the residency into your future work?
The most obvious thing is developing the 2 participatory pieces in community settings. Thanks to connections made during the residency, that process is already underway. On top of that , the insights about both my practice and the new professional landscapes it can sit in are shaping my plans short, medium and long term.